Housemate, Club for Growth, then Senator
Parts of this entry are out of date. It is published anyway, because an incomplete record that invites correction is more useful than no record at all.
A member of the House of Representatives, then president of the Club for Growth, and subsequently United States Senator for Pennsylvania from 2011 to 2023.
He too rented a room at 154 D Street, Jim Woodhill's house on Capitol Hill, during the period Jonathan Hare was staying there.
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Hare's reading, offered as his own: Toomey was more of a supply-sider than a fiscal conservative in the strict sense — but an evidence-based one, in favor of cutting taxes in ways that would actually increase growth and revenue.
As distinct from cutting them to line the pockets of donors who inherited their money, or of people exploiting the capitalist system in one way or another.
The Club for Growth, which Toomey ran after leaving the House, was then the premier home of the purist wing — the politics Hare says he himself held, of a breed he describes as no longer existing.
When Hare said Dianne Feinstein was his favorite politician, Toomey asked why — apparently on the assumption that a San Franciscan must be a communist.
Hare's reply was that by the standards of that city she was a right-winger, regarded on her own left as a turncoat, and in fact reasonable, principled and hard on defense and intelligence. Which is a lesson about frames rather than about either politician.
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Where Hare's job was to evict the future Speaker of the House
Open →housemateHousemate, chairman of the Budget Committee, later Speaker
Open →the wing in questionA breed that no longer exists, and two men who were the real thing
Open →the subject of the exchangeA family friend, in Hare's reckoning — and, by San Francisco standards, a right-winger
Open →Everything above is a distillation. The primary source is published in full, so that any claim on this page can be walked back to what was actually said — and where the two differ, the source governs.
The account this page was distilled from, preserved as dictated.
Read the source →Primary source · S-048The account this page was distilled from, preserved as dictated.
Read the source →Primary source · S-096The account this page was distilled from, preserved as dictated.
Read the source →This entry is deliberately incomplete. The gaps below are the things only certain people can settle — and settling one is a contribution like any other: recorded, timestamped and attributed to whoever made it.
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